


Kintsukuroi

by Writerleft



Series: Comes Marching Home [45]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Korrasami Month 2017, Sweet, unexpected art talent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 09:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12724185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writerleft/pseuds/Writerleft
Summary: (n) (v. phr.) "To repair with gold"; The art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.





	Kintsukuroi

“Avatar Korra!” somebody called, as she and Asami stepped into their apartment building. She glanced over her shoulder, saw the reporter, and winced.

Asami groaned beside her, and both of them quickened their step. Reporters had their purpose, but neither of them much liked talking to them, especially at the end of a long, trying day.

Especially the ones, like this guy, who had no sense of decorum, and actually followed them inside. “Avatar Korra! A few questions!”

Asami was steering to grab the building’s security, while Korra was making a line for the stairs. The reporter, though, was undeterred.

He grabbed Korra’s arm.

Korra’s chest went tight, a shout caught in her throat, and the next thing she knew, the reporter was in a moaning heap back near the entrance. Everyone else had stopped, was staring at her in shock.

Korra held her hands up, taking a deep breath, then another. She shouldn’t have done that. The reporter was way out of line, and she’d panicked but… she could’ve hurt him.

“Are you okay?” Asami asked, laying a light hand on Korra’s shoulder.

Korra nodded, weakly, clutching her arm where he’d grabbed her, feeling the material of the armband. Still, she let Asami guide her to the elevator, and focused on her breathing the entire way to her room.

“He grabbed my arm,” Korra said.

“I know,” Asami replied, fuming. “He won’t have a job in the morning. I’ll see to that.”

Korra felt like she could reply, but instead, she just kept holding her arm. The wrist she’d had wrapped in chain during the fight with Zaheer. Where the poison had been forced into her on the worst day of her life.

Pottery shattered nearby. “Shit!” Asami said.

Korra blinked, and realized they were in their apartment. Asami had fumbled them through the door, and accidentally knocked the vase off the little table while guiding Korra in.

Asami had her arms bent close, her fingers splaying, closing, splaying again. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. “I’ll deal with that in a minute. Korra, let’s sit down.”

“I’m sorry,” Korra said.

“No, no-no-no, don’t be.” Asami took her hand. “That guy was--”

“About the vase, I mean.”

“That was my fault.”

“Because you were worried about me.”

“You’re more important than a vase. Come on, Korra. Let’s sit.”

Korra let herself be guided to the couch. Asami sat beside her, soothing her hair, watching Korra, patient, quiet, loving. Everything.

Korra swallowed. “I could’ve hurt him.” _Dangerous, useless, broken Avatar._

“He deserved it.” _That’s just a cabbage thought. Ignore it. Don’t give it power…_

“I just… reacted. I used my bending, I threw him… I could’ve _hurt_ him.” _You could’ve killed him. Over touching you. You’re always a step away from becoming a monster, Korra._

“You were startled. Your wrist--”

“It’s _just_ my wrist.” Korra closed her eyes, leaned her head back.

_You’re too broken to have this power._

“I just get so… tired of it, sometimes.”

“Of what?”

She raised her hands, gesturing vaguely at her head.

Asami turned, raising herself up onto her knees, then pressed a kiss above Korra’s ear. She took Korra’s hand. “You’re amazing, Korra.”

“Some days, maybe.”

“ _Every_ day. Some people, some other Avatars, they go into battle now and then, they fight, maybe they win. You fight _every day_. Anyone else would’ve been worn down into nothing by now, just trampled down by it, but you... “ She pulled Korra’s head up, and Korra saw the smile on Asami’s face, the tears in her eyes. “I can see you fighting it, even now.”

Korra lowered her face, leaning into Asami’s shoulder. She clenched her fist, her eyes, her throat.. “It never goes away.”

“I know, honey,” Asami said, wrapping her arms around Korra, rocking her gently. “That’s why you’re so amazing. Not you, the Avatar. Korra. My beautiful, unstoppable Korra.”

She dried her eyes, looking up. “You always… you always know the right things to say.”

Asami smiled down at her, pushing the hair from Korra’s face. “You’re at war every day, Korra. In any way I can be, I’m right there with you. You know that, right?”

Korra clutched her hands. “Some days, that’s what gets me through. You make me feel… you remind me that I’m okay.”

“You’re more than okay,” Asami said, settling back beside her. “I can list all sorts of better words for you. Stupendous. Inspiring. Unwavering. Gentle.”

“Gentle?”

Asami pointedly looked at Korra’s hand, absentmindedly stroking Asami’s hair so softly she hadn’t even realized she was doing it. “You make me gentle.”

“You _are_ gentle. Sometimes, the world makes you harsh.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what.”

“Take my mood, and just… put me back together.”

“You put yourself back together, Korra. I just remind you of it.”

Korra shook her head, but at the same time, something tickled the back of it. She turned toward the entryway. “The vase…”

Asami winced. “Sorry about that. It was the first gift your parents got us, I hate that I--”

“It wasn’t your fault, Asami.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t yours.” She sighed. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s just a vase, right? We can get another.”

“But you love that vase!”

“I love your parents. Like I said, we can get another one. I’ll swing by the market--”

“No! I mean…” Korra looked down, contemplative.

Asami waited, stroking the back of Korra’s hand, giving her the time to think it through.

That was almost more distracting. Asami, sitting there, being more supportive and amazing than Korra could possibly deserve.

“Rin,” Korra murmured.

Asami’s brows furrowed. “Hmm?”

Korra shook her head. “Something I learned… don’t buy a new vase,” Korra said, bounding from the couch and grabbing a towel from the kitchen. .

“Oh...kay…”

Korra gathered all the pieces of the vase, the big ones at least, and bundled them all together. “I have an idea. When can we use your workshop?”

 

**

 

“I’m still not sure what we’re trying to do…” Asami said, looking at the materials Korra had brought with her. “I’m not going to be able to weld pottery back together.”

Korra double-checked all the supplies. The broken vase shards, still sitting atop their kitchen towel. Some thick pastes, Asami guessed they were an epoxy or resin of some sort, that made sense. Tongs and other metal crafting tools, some of her platinum stock, less so. What was Korra up to?

Korra clapped her hands, and Asami looked at her. Whatever she was being coy about, she was finally ready to talk.

She took Asami’s hand. “When I was… travelling the world. Looking for Raava, for myself, for anything to make me feel better, I met… well, lots of people. I’d do odd jobs here and there, for a room, for a meal. That kind of thing.”

Asami tilted her head, the way she did whenever Korra talked about their time apart, about everything she struggled with. As if she were already holding back tears she knew were likely to come. “One day, in the Fire Nation, an old metalworker, Rin, was letting me pump her furnace for a place to sleep, and the local magistrate brought in a broken pot. And Rin, she just smiled, and said it was perfect, she’d work on it right away.”

“A pot… like, a clay pot?”

Korra smiled at Asami’s raised eyebrow. “That’s just what I thought. Rin saw that I was interested, and I think… she never let on that she know who I was, but she could tell I was hurting. How broken I felt. She’d tried to cheer me up the whole day, but I just wanted to work and forget the world, you know?”

Asami squeezed her hand, gave her a smile.

Korra smiled back. “It was… a pretty low point, for me, I won’t sugar coat it. But then, I saw what she did with the pot…” Korra turned, looking at the shards. “

“She fixed it with metal?”

Korra nodded. “Gold flakes, mixed in a resin enamel and used to join everything together. It looked like… like a scar, that healed over beautiful instead of ugly. It…”

Asami wiped a tear from Korra’s face. Korra hadn’t realized she was crying. She clutched Asami’s hand, and with a steady voice, continued, “We worked through the night to get it done. She said, ‘Before, this pot was like any other. Nobody would remember it. Then it was broken. But now, it is beautiful, and it is only beautiful because it was broken.’”  

Asami took a deep breath, and now the tears she’d prepared herself for began to flow.

It was Korra’s turn to wipe them away. “You put the city back together--twice--and each time, more beautiful for how you reassembled it. Even when you weren’t there, just thinking of you helped me put myself back together, too.

“So, I thought… we could do the same for the vase. Platinum matches the color better, and I don’t want anybody metalbending it, and you had a bunch laying around, so I thought… now when we look at it, every time we see the platinum going through it, we can remember… I can remember... “

Asami kissed her. “Every time I think I know how beautiful you are, you find a way to just…”

Korra laughed, then Asami laughed too. They lay their foreheads together for a long moment, breathing together. Being together.

And after a full day of love, work, and light bickering, the vase was together, too.

It was beautiful.  
  
  
 _Fanart courtesy of[karmbean](https://karmbean.tumblr.com/post/174860997632/and-after-a-full-day-of-love-work-and-light)_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [fragileKnight1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragileKnight1/pseuds/fragileKnight1) for the story idea! 
> 
> Comments always appreciated, and I love to chat! [Visit my tumblr! Say hi! Or at least enjoy the flood of Korrasami reblogs, haha! ](https://threehoursfromtroy.tumblr.com/)


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